Breakdowns, Blowdowns, and Slides

[2dogs]

The last few weeks here in California have been stormy. Heck everybody knows that but what you may not know is now that the ground is saturated the soils are moving even though it is finally sunny. I have been working rehab until last week when my truck broke down. It is an early 1998 Dodge Cummins 12 valve put together by aliens. Not our fellow mankind from south of the border but real aliens. The kind that fly saucers and probe people in Arkansas. How else can you explain the need for elbows that bend the wrong way and fingers eight inches long just to change a ninety cent fuel hose. Only aliens can make something so difficult for humans to work on. I bet even the aliens used a few choice words, or maybe sounds, when were hiding hose clamps up under the intake manifold. I was finally able to change the dern hose but I have no skin left on my hands and I can't straighten my left arm anymore. I hate being too poor to afford a $120.00/hour mechanic.

Anyway before the breakdown I was working rehab from a series of winter storms. Then this. The first image is a slide that broke free from above this mid-slope road. About 40 or 50 feet broke loose and took a couple small redwoods with it. The reason I posted this image is that the redwood tree standing straight up just right of center came down the hill standing vertical and ended up on top of the slide, in the middle of the road, still standing straight up. Most of the root plate is exposed so i think I will pull it over rather than cut it. Also water has eroded 10 feet of the road and washed it into the very steep canyon.

This second image is a redwood that fell across the road 300' down from the slide. I am going to cut the root plate off and see if it is sound but since it slabbed I doubt that it is. If it is sound then I will bring the Lucas mill down and mill it. Cody doesn't look real happy here because it was pouring rain and we had just finished two hours of hiking around surveying the damage. We still a couple of hours road clearing to do just to get up the road.

 

[paccity]

looks like fun. it's ben pretty wet up here to, if we get any good wind we will have a lott of wood down.

 

[slowp]

Welcome to Warshington! :msp_biggrin:

Not to worry. The weather people say the jet stream has left you and is now over us. Our county has a flood watch going for tomorrow night. A springtime pineapple express is on the way with rain forecast to melt our nice snowpack all the way up to 7000 feet and send it down into our valleys.

We must embrace the Weather! -- a quote from a hooktender during a similar weather event.

 

[bitzer]

Wow thats nuts man! Hey at least its kind of like spring there. Still snow on the ground here and looking for more on friday.

 

[Gologit]

We finally got a couple of dry days after three straight weeks of rain and snow.
There's lots of blowdown, mostly oak and fir. I hiked into an upcoming job this morning, too muddy to drive, and the ground is like walking on sponge-cake.
We'd planned on starting to log some of the lower elevation stuff on the first Monday in April. No way that's going to happen, now.

 

[slowp]

If you plan to log in Warshington, you will need to dump some rock on your roads and landings and get a few yarders going. :msp_biggrin:

Make sure the rock is pointy so the tire shop will make some money.

 

[Gologit]

If you plan to log in Warshington, you will need to dump some rock on your roads and landings and get a few yarders going. :msp_biggrin:

Make sure the rock is pointy so the tire shop will make some money.

Yarders? We got yarders. No more than absolutely necessary, though. Unlike our neighbors to the North we tend to reserve the use of them for steep ground. They can't get into the woods, either. Too big, too heavy, for the current road conditions.

And rocking the roads? With some of our soil types you could rock roads forever and never have a cohesive base. The trucks just push that stuff into the mud until it goes away. I think some of the older haul roads have rock going clear to China...and they're still sloppy.

 

[paccity]

yup, some roads are pretty mutch riprap.:msp_rolleyes:

 

[2dogs]

The road is mostly on Forest Service land but it is maintained by the County. Nobody wants to pay much to maintain the road but the County has been helpful in the past. The Army used to use the road to train their HEOs. That was great, no obstacle too big for the Army.
Also the road is very steep just before the slide, too steep to back a ten wheeler down. I hope we can sidecast the material. BTW there are a bunch of 3' firs down the road further.

 

[paccity]

We finally got a couple of dry days after three straight weeks of rain and snow.
There's lots of blowdown, mostly oak and fir. I hiked into an upcoming job this morning, too muddy to drive, and the ground is like walking on sponge-cake.
We'd planned on starting to log some of the lower elevation stuff on the first Monday in April. No way that's going to happen, now.

then they will shut ya down for fire danger.:msp_sad:

 

[slowp]

The road is mostly on Forest Service land but it is maintained by the County. Nobody wants to pay much to maintain the road but the County has been helpful in the past. The Army used to use the road to train their HEOs. That was great, no obstacle too big for the Army.
Also the road is very steep just before the slide, too steep to back a ten wheeler down. I hope we can sidecast the material. BTW there are a bunch of 3' firs down the road further.

Ooooh sidecast bad. :msp_smile:
Just get an excavator and "ramp over" the slide....:msp_smile::msp_smile:

That's what we tell the engineers to do when they begin worrying about dollars to fix a big slide. There's one waiting for the snow to melt here.

Sometimes, the dumptrucks have to haul the material quite a ways to a waste area. On another slide here, even though Mother Nature had already dumped tons and tons of mud into the creek bottom, the material on the road prism had to be hauled many miles down the road to several waste areas.

 

[2dogs]

Ooooh sidecast bad. :msp_smile:
Just get an excavator and "ramp over" the slide....:msp_smile::msp_smile:

That's what we tell the engineers to do when they begin worrying about dollars to fix a big slide. There's one waiting for the snow to melt here.

Sometimes, the dumptrucks have to haul the material quite a ways to a waste area. On another slide here, even though Mother Nature had already dumped tons and tons of mud into the creek bottom, the material on the road prism had to be hauled many miles down the road to several waste areas.

Yeah I'm afraid you're right. We can't ramp this one. The road is sloped inward and all that rainwater collected at the lower end of the slide. (The slide occured in a sandy swale.) When the water reached the top of the berm it took the berm and 6' of road in one spot and 10' in another. I could not tell by eye if there was enough road left to drive on once the slide has been cleared.

You are correct in saying we need an excavator. The road is way too narrow for a front end loader. Because of the grade just before the slide we may need a smaller 4X4 dumptruck to haul to the top of the road. I hope the Forest will let us dump temporarily, just hours each day, on the edge of the campground parking lot.

 

[Gologit]

Ooooh sidecast bad. :msp_smile:
Just get an excavator and "ramp over" the slide....:msp_smile::msp_smile:

That's what we tell the engineers to do when they begin worrying about dollars to fix a big slide. There's one waiting for the snow to melt here.

Sometimes, the dumptrucks have to haul the material quite a ways to a waste area. On another slide here, even though Mother Nature had already dumped tons and tons of mud into the creek bottom, the material on the road prism had to be hauled many miles down the road to several waste areas.

What reasoning do they use up there for no sidecast? Is it a hard and fast rule or are there exceptions made on a situation by situation basis?

Sometimes sidecasting can be good. If the material is coarse enough to bind it can help shore up a road. Particularly if it's followed up immediately with some kind of compaction.

I don't do much carving on FS roads. On our private ground, if runoff/stream siltation isn't an issue, we try for no export at all on road stuff. Maybe our time factor is different? We usually need the road fixed yesterday and a lot of dinking around with extra dirt moving really slows things down.

 

[2dogs]

In this case any sidecast material will probably end up in the creek 100' down because the slope is 100% or more. It's too far down to help this road. Still if there was no creek I would just chuck it over the edge and move on. The descision will be made above my pay grade. And believe me, I fear Fish and Game. They are the ultimate bad (fish) cops.

 

[oregoncutter]

Sounds familiar

If you plan to log in Warshington, you will need to dump some rock on your roads and landings and get a few yarders going. :msp_biggrin:

Make sure the rock is pointy so the tire shop will make some money.

You must have experienced driving on what I call. Weyerhauser pea gravel( that grade is anything they can scoop up and dump out of a dump truck) although they have gotten better down here the last few years,

 

[slowp]

You must have experienced driving on what I call. Weyerhauser pea gravel( that grade is anything they can scoop up and dump out of a dump truck) although they have gotten better down here the last few years,

Yes. Back in the days when I had to go into the Mineral Block, which was a checkerboard area shared with Weyco, I seemed to get a flat every time from their fine gravel. I had a new Chevy Blazer and it had street tires. Sometimes I'd be near a landing, and I'd start to change the tire and a logger would come running up out of the unit and take over. But it was a pain.

And Sidecast is not done because it can cause sediment to flow into the water. Sidecast built roads also tend to fail a lot and slide off the hillside. If there is extra material from road building, it gets trucked to a storage spot. Since the only roads built are temporary roads, the soil is trucked back when the road is put back to bed.

Roads built now are full bench.

You can't argue with that. A threat of any little bit of sediment going into water, trumps common sense.

Thanks, I needed to remember part of why I'm pulling the plug.

 

[slowp]

The big meltdown is beginning here. :msp_mad: I had planned on a kind of fun, ski day on Friday. :msp_mad:

It's a little wet this morning...

 

[RandyMac]

The yearly attrition rate in the parks is bad enough, but this year many really big trees bought it. The road through Prairie Creek has 8 new speed bumps. I'd bet the faltering Bull Creek Flats lost quite a few.